Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Hi all,

I think I've just blown a headgasket in my car as my coolant is boiling and overflowing out of the overflow tank. I've been quoted up to $2000 to get it fixed, and apparently 90% of that price is in labour. I've also been told that it is not a particularly hard process, just time consuming. After hearing this, I was thinking I'd have a go at fixing it myself. Could someone give me some detailed directions and a list of parts/tools that I'll need to do replace it? Even a generic howto on replacing head gaskets would be great.

Also, can I just order a VL RB30 headgasket, or are they slightly different?

Thanks,

Michael

EDIT: Actually, one last thing - was my $2000 quote high or low? If I can get it for a hell of a lot less, I might just get someone else to do it.

become good friends with a turbo mechanic ;) labour at a cost of a slab :)

while ur doing it go and buy a o ring'd head gasket or something that wont blow again :rofl:

do rb25's have torque settings? anyone?

quick rundown on how to do it, remove the following parts

1- fan shroud and engine fan,

2- intake cross over pipe,

3-leave intake manifold on head, just remove fuel hoses, and wiring, and some other hoses you will see then if you forget them when you lift of the head

4- crank angle sensor and covers

5 all the belts, a/c , steer, alt

6- put motor on top dead center

7- remove balancer and lower cover

8- mark camgears and crank gear with liqud paper in (ie put a dot on the gear and on the belt)

9- loosen tensioner and remove belt

10- take of plug cover and rocker covers

11- drop the exhaust at the dump pipe

12- remove turbo feed hoses (the hardest bit of the whole job)

13- you may have to remove the cams to get to the head bolts just check i can remember its not hard

14- remove head bolts

15- get someone to help you lift the head off, check nothing is still attached, ie hoses wiring small bolts

16- idealy get the head checked, get a razor blade and scrap away the old head gasket

of head and block then sand it with some wet n dry cleanlyness is the key hear

17- wipe down with a clean rag and re assemble in the reverese order, just torque up the head bolts to correct tension

piece of cake really, it honestly isnt that hard to do, so long as your not a complete tool

I have done many heads in my time and i would recommend getting the head tested and an engine shop. I have had it happend twice with a head gasket job when the customer didnt want to get the head tested and the heads had warped due to overheating. Both times it was repairable but ended up costing them twice the labour.

i was thinking about doing my head gasket in my ma70 myself cause of labour cost and spent countless hours looking up info. some of the best advice i got was to video camera the whole thing. taken parts off isnt that hard but putting them back togother can turn out very difficult. make sure you label everything. also like Bleach1 said get the head checked and make sure its not warped. if you change the head gasket and its warped you'll have to do it again

and for $2000 they will probbaly replace the head gasket, check the head etc...do everything needed

i had a similar theory about my car - doing the same kind of things with boiling and slight over heating -- turns out it's just a bust thermostat thats sticking, will work out cheaper if it is the same for you guys!

still to find a new thermostat for my car though

Yeah head-gaskets aren't too bad to replace...just give yourself a weekend and you'll get it done no problem, with time to spare. It's just time consuming...that's why it's so costly.

The head gasket on my corolla went...$50 for the gasket...yet quoted $1000 to put it in, why wouldn't you do it yourself if you have the tools?

Dan

quick rundown on how to do it, remove the following parts

1- fan shroud and engine fan,

2- intake cross over pipe,

3-leave intake manifold on head, just remove fuel hoses, and wiring, and some other hoses you will see then if you forget them when you lift of the head

4- crank angle sensor and covers and make index marks to put them back in the same place

5 all the belts, a/c , steer, alt

6- put motor on top dead center

7- remove balancer and lower cover breaker bar against the chassis and use the starter motor to crack the bolt which is 1-1/16 or 27mm, maKW SURE YOUR IGNITION PACK IS DISCONNECTED.

8- mark camgears and crank gear with liqud paper in (ie put a dot on the gear and on the belt)

9- loosen tensioner and remove belt the tensioner is a 14mm nut and needs an allen key to turn away far enough to remove tension and make it easy to reassemble

10- take of plug cover and rocker covers

11- drop the exhaust at the dump pipe or just use a 17mm open end spanner and remove the turbo from the manifold (4 nuts) and leave the manifold attached to the head

12- remove turbo feed hoses (the hardest bit of the whole job) then you can leave these on and the turbo will hang on the exhaust dump

13- you may have to remove the cams to get to the head bolts just check i can remember its not hard at top dead centre there are indents cast intop the cams  to allow you to access the studs with a 10mm hex drive. Buy a good quality one.

14- remove head bolts

15- get someone to help you lift the head off, check nothing is still attached, ie hoses wiring small bolts

16- idealy get the head checked, get a razor blade and scrap away the old head gasket

of head and block then sand it with some wet n dry cleanlyness is the key hear

17- wipe down with a clean rag and re assemble in the reverese order, just torque up the head bolts to correct tensionHead torque settings

These are the specs I used on my last rebuild engines

Head is torqued down in 5 stages.

1. 22ftlbs

2. 72ftlbs

3. slacken off

4. 22ftlbs

5. 75ftlbs

piece of cake really, it honestly isnt that hard to do, so long as your not a complete tool

Hope that helps

Sorry for the late reply everyone. I probably should have posted my original post now as I just went to Tasmania for a week and only just got back (so couldn't look at replies).

Anyway, the info you've given me is perfect everyone, especially skylinegeoff and jomsy. I'm going to get SATO to do it for me, and I'll watch and learn :P

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Meh, I think we're well into a new era of 90s JDM car. The days when spare engines and parts were cheap and plentiful are long gone. Therefore the YOLO approach is now massively difficult to justify, use and maintain. One should start to ponder whether an 800HP build is really justified, using stock parts. My thoughts? If you like/love the car and want to keep it and don't want to ruin yet another one, then be discrete about how much you ask from the stock parts. A 5 or 600 HP build is still a very fast car. If you want to go silly, have to have the 1000HP territory, then just drop all your cash, buy billet everything (or PRP cast block, etc etc) and use a bigger/more modern gearbag, and put a massive retrofit diff and axles into it. If you ruin any of those things then you're either ham fisted and deserve it, or you're pushing waaaay too far for the stock stuff anyway. The (presumably) young guys who are buying 30-35 year old busted arse Jap refugees and thinking they can live the life that was lived by others 20 years ago are deluded. Expectations need to be adjusted somewhat.
    • Just don’t be silly enough to think it’ll never happen either 
    • I take it that you bought the centre to suit the GTR axles? As in there was a plan, not just somehow lucky that it worked? It all looks excellent, by the way.
    • New engine block time. Up to you whether you want to keep going down this road with this project. Unfortunately a lot of these cars are like this. The road to getting these cars into decent shape is long and not fun for reasons that you're discovering. 
    • Essay time. First things first, an RB running stock turbo and boost levels shouldn't get so bad as to stall from reversion if the recirc valve has been deleted. Should get a little fluffy and annoying, but in my experience, not so bad as to stall. Of course, every car is a bit different, so it remains possible that stalling will happen. So, running with no recirc valve is somewhat of an option, for otherwise stock stuff. Atmo BOVs cause all sorts of shit, even on an otherwise stock setup. Only gets worse the higher the boost and the bigger the turbo. At that point you really need to go for a different ECU and no AFM. Rebuilding the stock recirc valve configuration is not hard. You just need a stock or aftermarket BOV with the appropriate adapter for the 2 bolt flange on the back of the J pipe, and to get/make an appropriate ~1" pipe to get the air back to the turbo inlet, and to possibly modify the inlet (if it is not stock) to take the recirc pipe back in. Not hard. Just takes some cutting and welding. Putting an R35 type AFM into the car anywhere is not as simple as just buying the AFM and throwing it in. You will also need to buy the appropriate boss that will then need to be welded onto the pipe where you're installing it. You can clearly see why by looking at the photo posted above. They are not a "simple" swap for a stocker. You can't put on in place of the stock AFM. You can put one in place of the stock AFM, if you get the mounting boss and weld it to some pipe and otherwise make that pipe piece work like the stock AFM housing. Or you can buy such an adapter, either complete with the 4 bolt flange for the air box, or without, for varying degrees of work needed to then make it fit your stock airbox or some pod filter or whatever you have going on. Oh, and the R35 AFM is not plug and play. The wiring is different, but changing that is trivial. The plug is also different so you either end up repinning the original wires onto the new plug, or you just use a short adapter. If you weld a boss to the cold side pipe, the cold side pipe really wants to be 3", otherwise the scaling on the meter can get a bit weird, but whatever the pipe size, it's not as easy as just using the (fully documented in the Nistune doco) simple method for choosing R35 AFM in X" pipe size in the software, because the scaling will already be a bit different. Anyway, all of this has been comprehensively worked through on the Nistune forums, so there is full knowledge available. I would use a Link/Haltech before I would bother putting an AFM into a cold side pipe. That's a lot of effort for a bodge. Nistune is great, can work well even at fairly high power levels, but you are stuck with the limitations of it being the stock ECU, which includes needing to use an AFM, which is not always convenient for every set of modifications. You have to have a think about what you already have, what you want to have, and decide early if you'd be better off jumping ship to an aftermarket ECU. This so you don't waste time and money doing things 2 or 3 times. Never heard of ECUmaster. Sounds like a backyard operation. If there are good tuners for it where you are, and it is a solid product, then it will be fine. We're only talking about an R engine here. Back in the day they all ran on crude nasty early 90s ECUs and they were fine. You don't need a rocket surgeon's ECU to run one.
×
×
  • Create New...